Antiprotonic Atoms as Gateways to HCI

Atomic physics with highly-charged ions at the future FAIR facility: A status report

Research in nuclear physics is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. At the interface of nuclear and particle physics, there are efforts to understand the nucleon and the NN interaction based on the underlying quark substructure as described by a fundamental field theory (QCD). There are also substantial efforts to apply field theories to broader areas of nuclear physics, including nucleon-nucleon scattering, nuclear structure, relativistic transport theory, and ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. Many of the techniques applied to these processes have been borrowed from atomic physics, where applications of a fundamental field theory (QED) have become standard technology. This workshop concentrated on a variety of open problems in the application of field theory to nuclear phenomena and brought together a diverse group of theoreticians working in nuclear, particle and atomic physics. Separate abstracts were prepared for 23 papers of this conference.

Four new elements with atomic numbers Z = 113, 115, 117 and 118 have recently been added to the periodic table. The questions pertaining to these superheavy systems are at the forefront of research in nuclear and atomic physics, and chemistry. This Perspective offers a high-level view of the field and outlines future challenges. The addition of nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson to the periodic table are a reminder of the achievements in nuclear physics and chemistry. Witold Nazarewicz outlines the future challenges for the field.

The ANL Physics Division traces its roots to nuclear physics research at the University of Chicago around the time of the second world war. Following the move from the University of Chicago out to the present Argonne site and the formation of Argonne National Laboratory: the Physics Division has had a tradition of research into fundamental aspects of nuclear and atomic physics. Initially, the emphasis was on areas such as neutron physics, mass spectrometry, and theoretical studies of the nuclear shell model. Maria Goeppert Maier was an employee in the Physics Division during the time she did her Nobel-Prize-winning work on the nuclear shell model. These interests diversified and at the present time the research addresses a wide range of current problems in nuclear and atomic physics. The major emphasis of the current experimental nuclear physics research is in heavy-ion physics, centered around the ATLAS facility (Argonne Tandem-Linac Accelerator System) with its new injector providing intense, energetic ion beams over the fill mass range up to uranium. ATLAS is a designated National User Facility and is based on superconducting radio-frequency technology developed in the Physics Division. A small program continues in accelerator development. In addition, the Division has a strong program in medium-energy nuclear physics carried out at a variety of major national and international facilities. The nuclear theory research in the Division spans a wide range of interests including nuclear dynamics with subnucleonic degrees of freedom, dynamics of many-nucleon systems, nuclear structure, and heavy-ion interactions. This research makes contact with experimental research programs in intermediate-energy and heavy-ion physics, both within the Division and on the national and international scale. The Physics Division traditionally has strong connections with the nation's universities. We have many visiting faculty members and we encourage students to participate in our programs for performing thesis research. The Division in early 1999 has 105 full-time members [36 regular scientific (Ph.D. level) staff, 19 postdoctoral appointees and visitors, and 50 technical, administrative, and secretarial personnel] and an annual operating budget of about $17 million. On average, the Division annually supports 50 graduate and undergraduate students.

This report discusses research in nuclear physics. Topics covered in this paper are: symmetry principles; nuclear astrophysics; nuclear structure; quark-gluon plasma; quantum chromodynamics; symmetry breaking; nuclear deformation; and cold fusion. (LSP)

The Tenth International Spring Seminar on Nuclear Physics was held in Vietri sul Mare from May 21 to May 25, 2010. This Seminar was the tenth in a series of topical meetings held every two or three years in the Naples area. The series began with the Sorrento meeting in 1986 and continued with the Capri meeting in 1988, the Ischia meeting in 1990, the Amalfi meeting in 1992, the Ravello meeting in 1995, the S. Agata meeting in 1998, the Maiori meeting in 2001, the Paestum meeting in 2004, and the Vico Equense meeting in 2007.For this tenth meeting we returned to Salerno Bay and met in the small town of Vietri. While the location of the Conference has never been the same, what remained invariant is the aim of these meetings, which is to discuss recent advances and new perspectives in nuclear structure experiments and theory in a pleasant and friendly atmosphere.It is by now well established that we have entered a new era in Nuclear Physics research with the advent of radioactive ion beam facilities. While nuclear structure studies are currently being performed in several laboratories where RIBs are available, the development of new facilities, which will provide high-intensity beams, is in progress or under discussion in Europe, Asia and North America. At this meeting we had a comprehensive overview of this fascinating field and of future scenarios thanks to the participation of leaders of the most important projects.The results that are becoming available for nuclei far from stability are highlighting new themes of research, such as the evolution of the shell structure when moving towards the particle drip lines, and stimulating a proficuous interplay between experiment and theory. On the other hand, new ideas and the development of more powerful computational tools promise a deeper understanding of the structure of nuclei in terms of the basic interactions between their constituents.As usual, the program of the meeting consisted of general talks and of more specialized seminars, the latter including most of the contributions submitted by participants. The speakers covered five main topics: i) Nuclear Structure far from Stability: New Advances and Perspectives; ii) From Nuclear Forces to Nuclear Structure; iii) Exploring Nuclear Shell Structure: Experiment and Theory; iv) New Aspects of Collective Nuclear Motion; and v) Special Topics.We received 63 manuscripts out of the 77 invited papers and contributions presented at the Seminar. All of these have been peer reviewed and are collected in this volume. We would like to thank all the anonymous colleagues who have acted as referees to assess the suitability of the various articles for publication in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series. We are confident that the high quality of both invited and contributed papers contained in these Proceedings will be appreciated by the nuclear physics community.As was the case for most of the previous Seminars, the Vietri Seminar also ended with a Round Table Discussion on the theme ‘Trends and Perspectives in Nuclear Structure’. N Benczer-Koller, B A Brown, A Faessler, B Fornal, O Sorlin, and I Talmi kindly agreed to be on the panel and their remarks were essential in bringing about the active involvement of the audience.The Conference had about 100 participants from some 20 countries (please see PDF for list of participants). This is well in line with the tradition of these meetings, as is the fact that about 50% of the present participants attended one or more of the previous Seminars.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and the University of Naples Federico II who helped make the Seminar possible. We also acknowledge the support provided in various ways by the Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche which acted as host to the Seminar.Aldo Covello Angela Gargano Editors LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEEA Covello (Chair) A Gargano (Co-Chair) L Coraggio (Scientific Secretary) F Andreozzi N Itaco G La Rana N Lo Iudice A. Porrino INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE J Äystö (Jyväskylä)D Morrissey (Michigan) A B Balantekin (Wisconsin)W Nazarewicz (Oak Ridge) B R Barrett (Tucson)P von Neumann-Cosel (Darmstadt) P G Bizzeti (Firenze)R Okamoto (Kyushu) Y Blumenfeld (CERN and IPN Orsay)A V Ramayya (Vanderbilt) J Dobaczewski (Warsaw)J Schiffer (Argonne) G Fiorentini (Ferrara)A C Shotter (Edinburgh) B Fornal (Kraków)Ch Stoyanov (Sofia) S Gales (GANIL)I Talmi (Rehovot) F Iachello (Yale)P van Duppen (Leuven) R Jolos (Dubna)A Vitturi (Padova) M Lattuada (Catania) SPONSORS OF THE SEMINARDipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli "Federico II" Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare Università di Napoli Federico II

Recently, slow and ultra‐slow antiprotons are now available, which will open a new field of research in atomic physics as well as in related fields. In realizing this, the combination of an RFQD (Radio Frequency Quadrupole Decelerator) and a large multi‐ring trap (MRT) installed in a super‐conducting solenoid has been employed. Several million antiprotons have already been accumulated, and a mono‐energetic antiproton beam of 10 eV has been extracted and transported through a specially designed beam line. A couple of basic experiments which get feasible by the developments of ultra slow antiproton beam are discussed, which include ionization and antiprotonic atom formation processes and also to study spectroscopic nature of various meta‐stable antiprotonic atoms under single collision conditions. A so‐called cusp trap configuration is also discussed, which could for the first time synthesize intense spin‐polarized antihydrogen beams. At the same time, it could trap antihydrogen atoms for a macroscopic time.

This report describes the accomplishments in basic research in nuclear physics carried out by the theoretical nuclear physics group in the Department of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, during the period of April 1, 1993 to March 31, 1996. The work done covers three separate areas, low energy nuclear reactions, intermediate energy physics, and nuclear structure studies. Although the various subjects are spread among different areas, they are all based on two techniques that they have developed in previous years. These techniques are: (a) a powerful method for continuum-random-phase-approximation (CRPA) calculations of the nuclear response; and, (b) the direct reaction approach to complete and incomplete fusion reactions, which enables them to describe on a single footing all the different types of nuclear reactions, i.e., complete fusion, incomplete fusion and direct reactions, in a systematic way based on a single theoretical framework. In this report, the authors first summarize their achievements in these three areas, and then present final remarks.

Level crossings in the ground state of ions occur when the nuclear charge Z and ion charge Z_ion are varied along an isoelectronic sequence until the two outermost shells are nearly degenerate. We examine all available level crossings in the periodic table for both near neutral ions and highly charged ions (HCIs). Normal E1 transitions in HCIs are in X-ray range, however level crossings allow for optical electromagnetic transitions that could form the reference transition for high accuracy atomic clocks. Optical E1 (due to configuration mixing), M1 and E2 transitions are available in HCIs near level crossings. We present scaling laws for energies and amplitudes that allow us to make simple estimates of systematic effects of relevance to atomic clocks. HCI clocks could have some advantages over existing optical clocks because certain systematic effects are reduced, for example they can have much smaller thermal shifts. Other effects such as fine-structure and hyperfine splitting are much larger in HCIs, which can allow for richer spectra. HCIs are excellent candidates for probing variations in the fine-structure constant, alpha, in atomic systems as there are transitions with the highest sensitivity to alpha-variation.

The rapidly growing research area of radioactive nuclear beam physics is described. The various types of facilities used at present, and planned for the future, are discussed briefly. Then their uses in research in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and in nuclear-solid state applications are discussed. An intense effort in nuclear reaction physics has been directed toward understanding the neutron halo, a completely new result discovered for very neutron rich nuclei via the use of radioactive nuclear beams. Their use has also produced an immense amount of data on nuclear masses, lifetimes, decay modes, multipole moments, and energy levels. Other areas of research in nuclear physics with radioactive nuclear beams are less well developed, but appear to be promising. In nuclear astro-physics, several of the critical reactions of primordial and stellar nucleosynthesis have been studied. In addition, the use of radioactive nuclear beams has already provided dramatically improved definition of some of the processes of nucleosynthesis which operate near the proton and neutron drip lines, with the promise of much more detailed information to come. In more applied reasearch, the interaction between implanted nuclei and solids has often been used as a tool for nuclear physics, but the same studies can also be used to study properties of solids with previously unachievable sensitivity. The results in the past decade from radioactive nuclear beam research have been both vast and varied, but new facilities and intense interest in the research community should provide new information in the future well beyond that which presently exists.

Atomic physics with highly-charged heavy ions at the GSI future facility: The scientific program of the SPARC collaboration

Anthony Milner Lane, one of the leading theoretical nuclear physicists of his generation, died from cancer at his home in Oxford, UK, on 9 February 2011. From the 1950s to the 1970s he made many significant advances in the theories and understanding of nuclear reactions and structure.Tony was born in Trowbridge, UK, on 27 July 1928, and in 1946 he was awarded a grant to attend Selwyn College at Cambridge University, where he graduated in mathematics in 1949 and physics in 1950. Although he began his research in nuclear physics at Cambridge for his PhD, he completed it at Birmingham University under Rudolf Peierls, one of the innovators of nuclear science. His thesis was entitled “The Application of the Shell Model to Nuclear Reactions.” Tony joined the theoretical physics division at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, which spearheaded nuclear science research in the UK. At the time, the division employed many talented physicists, including Tony Skyrme of skyrmion fame, John Hubbard, and John Bell, known for the hidden-variable theorem.During the 1950s and subsequent years, Harwell had many reactors and particle accelerators, and Tony soon revealed a talent for interpreting the data obtained from nuclear reactions induced by neutrons and charged particles. He rapidly became an expert in theories of both nuclear reactions and nuclear structure. He was invited by Victor Weisskopf to spend 1954–55 at MIT, and while there he took time to visit Princeton University to work with Eugene Wigner and Robert Thomas. In 1956 he collaborated with Thomas at Los Alamos National Laboratory and in 1957 visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For Reviews of Modern Physics, he wrote an article in 1957 on nuclear reactions, and in 1958 he and Thomas wrote a definitive review of the rigorous R-matrix theory of resonances; it became one of the journal’s most cited reviews ever published.In nuclear structure, Tony collaborated with J. Philip Elliott in 1958 to write about the nuclear shell model in an extensive article that makes many comparisons with nuclear data. Tony was unconventional for a theorist in that he examined experimental literature and noted in a “little black book” unusual observational features that he couldn’t understand from existing theory. Those notes enabled him to develop new theories and identify new nuclear states—mainly collective states of nuclei and isobaric analogue states—seen in nuclear reactions. With Eric Lynn and other Harwell colleagues, Tony made significant advances in 1959–60 in the theory of nucleon-capture reactions and in 1964 discovered the importance of a two-stage mechanism in which the initial nuclear excitation of a giant dipole state greatly enhances subsequent photon emission.Tony was in great demand abroad for lectures and consulting, and he spent many extended periods away from Harwell at numerous institutions, including several universities in the US, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and universities in Australia and South Africa.In the early 1980s, Tony took up atomic theory related to the separation of isotopes by laser light. His several fundamental contributions included a 1986 proof that the multichannel quantum defect theory of atomic physics could be straightforwardly derived from R-matrix theory. Until his retirement from Harwell in 1989, he also worked on theories on the formation of meso-molecules related to the possibility of muon-catalyzed fusion. His more than 100 publications included the widely used textbook Nuclear Theory: Pairing Force Correlations and Collective Motion (W. A. Benjamin, 1964). He never had an interest in working in an administrative post.Tony was a very kind person and a great family man. He endured some major illnesses, including tuberculosis, heart disease, and cancer, but he never let those setbacks quash his interest in work and enjoyment of life. A lifelong hiker, he enjoyed long walks wherever he happened to be living. In 1954, for instance, he made a day trip down and up the Grand Canyon. A snowstorm near the top exhausted his resources, and he was rescued on horseback by the local sheriff, at a cost of $25. And when he visited his in-laws in Israel, they shook their heads at the mad Englishman who would go for postprandial hikes in temperatures of 38 ˚C. He will be remembered by his many friends and colleagues as a modest man with a penetrating intellect and with many accomplishments.Anthony Milner LanePPT|High resolution© 2011 American Institute of Physics.

This paper briefly reviews the recent advances on nuclear physics research in Department of Physics in Tsinghua University, covering the QCD phase transition and relativistic heavy ion collisions, experimental and theoretic studies on nuclear structure and the nuclear reaction research at intermediate energies.

Atomic physics and synchrotron radiation: The production and accumulation of highly charged ions

Laser-driven ion acceleration is often analyzed assuming that ionization reaches a steady state early in the interaction of the laser pulse with the target. This assumption breaks down for materials of high atomic number for which the ionization occurs concurrently with the acceleration process. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we have examined acceleration and simultaneous field ionization of copper ions in ultra-thin targets (20–150 nm thick) irradiated by a laser pulse with intensity 1 × 1021 W/cm2. At this intensity, the laser pulse drives strong electric fields at the rear side of the target that can ionize Cu to charge states with valence L-shell or full K-shell. The highly-charged ions are produced only in a very localized region due to a significant gap between the M- and L-shells’ ionization potentials and can be accelerated by strong, forward-directed sections of the field. Such an “ionization injection” leads to well-pronounced bunches of energetic, highly-charged ions. We also find that for the thinnest target (20 nm) a push by the laser further increases the ion energy gain. Thus, the field ionization, concurrent with the acceleration, offers a promising mechanism for the production of energetic, high-charge ion bunches.